I started writing this post in July, when it actually was a year since I started sewing again. But then it was summer, I did some sewing, and generally life intervened so this post has been sitting as a draft for a while now waiting for me to finish it. Anyway, here it is.
I started sewing again in July last year having made nothing for myself since my twenties - although in the intervening years I mended or altered quite a few things and made various dressing up outfits for my children when they were small so those years weren't a sewing free zone. I stumbled across Dolly Clackett's blog by following a link in someone else's, liked a lot of what I saw, followed links to other sewing blogs... and decided that I wanted to start dressmaking again. And so (unitentionally actually) began the building of a fabric and pattern stash (this page is still under construction - there are quite a few more patterns still to be added...). Not as big as my knitting pattern and yarn stash, which I am also slowly working my way through, but I now have plenty of patterns and fabric to keep me entertained for a good while to come!
Between July last year and the end of July this year I've made and finished 28 dresses and have another six which are either waiting to be finished or were just toiles.
In this past year I've learnt quite a lot
- I'm not very keen on sewing with polycotton fabrics, I much prefer 100% cotton.
- I've learnt about fit (although I haven't really cracked it yet, still more to learn) and that I don't really want a great deal of wearing ease in my dresses so in the early days patterns which I made up according to my measurements were quite often too big. I'm now much more likely to cut a smaller size than I was a year ago when my thinking was that if I cut too big I could always take it in - easier than making something which needs to be let out!
- I like two basic styles in equal measure - 50s dresses with big skirts like those worn by Betty Draper in the early series of Mad Men, and more fitted straight-skirted dresses as worn by all sorts of women in various eras. I also like V-back or scoop back bodices - much easier to zip up if the zip is in the back!
- I like patterned fabric. Although I've got plain fabric in my stash it's probably only going to be used for trial versions of dresses which will end up being made in patterned fabric. Or maybe for collars or other contrast. This shouldn't have come as a surprise really, because if I'm shopping for rtw dresses it will almost always be the print on the fabric which draws me. I never look at plain dresses unless they are on a mannequin and I like the cut.
Over the course of the next year I'd like to
- make some shirts / blouses and skirts. I've seen so many popping up on blogs and instagram that I really like the look of, I've got the patterns (and the fabric, ha) so I just need to get on with it.
- make some shirtdresses. I don't remember ever making anything with buttonholes in the past, although I'm sure we must have learnt how to make them by hand when I was at school. Now though I have a machine that can make them for me so I should really conquer my feelings of trepidation, choose a pattern, and go.
- make a dent in my mending/alterations pile. I have quite a lot of clothes which need something doing to them - from just adding a hook and eye or popper, to major unpicking and refashioning. There are some gems in that pile which I would love to be wearing so maybe I should follow a make one mend one mantra to get through them.
And now I'd better just publish this, because it won't be that long until it's the one year anniversary of this blog, when no doubt there'll be another review type post!
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